[tosti]

You have to be an adult to get a tattoo. Because by then, you're expected to be able to make a well-informed descision and be able to think of possible coonsequences.

Why on earth would a child be allowed to decide on life-changing or even life-shattering bodily harm?

[plorkyeran]

The entire purpose of puberty blockers is to enable deferring the decision until you are an adult and can make a well-informed decision. The make an irrevocable decision right now options are to go through natural puberty or immediately go on HRT.

We also let children decide on inflicting life-shattering bodily harm to themselves all the time. The classic examples are things like contact sports (children playing tackle football is pretty fucked up) and ballet. In the latter case they're like four when they commit to having deformed feet.

[a_shovel]

Puberty blockers are not meant to be prescribed from onset of puberty to adulthood. (I don't think anyone wants to be just starting puberty at 18.) They're meant to buy time for the patient to make a decision and get counseling if they need it if they're not sure they want a natal puberty or HRT at the onset of puberty. They will have to decide as a minor.

[HedonicEscal8r]

I disagree with this, puberty blockers should be used sparingly and certainly should not be taken until adulthood. Can you imagine starting puberty at 18?

Trans children deserve to mature at the same time as their peers.

[alexgieg]

Who are you to decide this for them, beyond and above the professional psychiatrists and psychologists who evaluate them based on actual science, and their own parents' informed decision?

[MSFT_Edging]

> certainly should not be taken until adulthood

When do you think puberty happens?

[pseudalopex]

They meant trans people should be allowed hormone replacement therapy before legal adulthood seemingly.

[slowmovintarget]

No, that is not the purpose of "puberty blockers." Those drugs were developed for four different reasons:

1. To delay extremely early-onset puberty in children as young as seven or eight who had a pituitary disorder.

2. To treat advanced prostate cancer.

3. To treat endometriosis and uterine fibroids in women.

4. As part of a treatment for breast cancers, part of fertility protocols, or treatments for endocrine disorders.

This notion of using these drugs to disrupt healthy and physiologically normal puberty, was not even a little part of their purpose. It's how they're being used now in some cases.

The fact is that administering hormone disruptors or synthetic hormones are the opposite of what should be done, as gender dysphoria often resolves itself as the process of puberty and natural maturation unfolds. Interventionism, in these cases, is extremely harmful.

Adults making these choices are a completely different case.

[alexgieg]

Could you link to recent peer-reviewed meta-studies of medical literature showing "gender dysphoria often resolves itself as the process of puberty and natural maturation unfolds"?

[pseudalopex]

> No, that is not the purpose of "puberty blockers."

The context was gender dysphoria treatment. Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize.[1]

> This notion of using these drugs to disrupt healthy and physiologically normal puberty, was not even a little part of their purpose.

Gender dysphoric puberty has unhealthy effects.

> gender dysphoria often resolves itself as the process of puberty and natural maturation unfolds

I never saw this claim supported by studies which did not include children who did not meet gender dysphoria criteria. And those studies found persistence predictors when they looked. Meeting gender dysphoria criteria for example.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[slowmovintarget]

The context was medical intervention for a minor. You trying to narrow it to be only that of treating gender dysphoria has the convenient effect of having to only consider whether the suffering is related to the dysphoria, and not the broader consequences such as whether a minor is able to understand those consequences.

The suffering in the moment is "I want" and the damage the treatment has in satisfying the want creates "I can't ever..."

Discussing that requires the broader context, so your redefinition doesn't work.

Puberty doesn't have unhealthy effects, the dysphoria does. There is also evidence that treatment doesn't resolve the worst "effects" namely depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation or tendencies. Those often return after the initial euphoria of getting what's desired wears off. It's why there's a fair percentage of kids that later regret having done that to themselves, and it's why the suicide rate for those who receive transition treatment doesn't actually go down, and in some cohorts the rate actually went up.

If we really cared about people suffering from dysphoria we'd look at these facts and be forced to reconsider how quickly we reach for these treatments.

[HedonicEscal8r]

If you are 11 and wait 7 years to get a tattoo, your tattoo will look just as good or better.

If you are 11 and wait 7 years to transition, you will suffer irreversible physical and psychological damage. You will have missed formative social experiences. You will have to get expensive, painful surgeries to partially correct what was done to you.

[ASalazarMX]

IMO the issue is that we're still seeing the world in black and white. A trans person can't transform into the opposite sex, that's biologically impossible. They exist up in a middle ground, and they should be recognized and accepted as they are so they don't feel the need to transition and detransition to fulfill the binary standard.

Trying to make-believe that people can convert to the opposite sex, and even go back, is doing more psychological damage than accepting our differences, not to speak of the invasive/destructive treatments on an otherwise healthy body.

[HedonicEscal8r]

If you think that a modal person who transitions does so because they don't understand what biological changes can be achieved* and/or because society doesn't accept them "as they are" enough, you are hopelessly confused about this entire topic.

*Note that a disagreement about whether currently available medical procedures constitute a "sex change" is almost always a dispute of semantics and not of fact. A trans woman who describes herself as having "changed her sex" is almost never claiming she can give birth.

[ASalazarMX]

You're not getting my point. I've seen that trans people don't want others to think of them as their former sex, they don't want to be reminded that they're still men that look look like women, or viceversa. Mentioning that they can't actually get pregnant, or impregnate someone, is taboo. IMO, this shows a strong psychological, rather than medical, motive. That sets their personal expectations to an impossible ideal, since that needs forcing others to participate in the illusion of a complete sex change.

Disclaimer: I don't know any trans person IRL, so my perception is likely skewed by their loud online interactions.

See this article about muxes, the third gender of the prehispanic Zapotec civilization that still survives today, for an example of accepting gender choice differences healthily, without creating culture wars, and without aggresive treatments on an otherwise healthy individual:

https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20181125-the-third-gender...

[alexgieg]

Try knowing some in real life. I know dozens, and it's really hard not to think of them as psychologically being of the opposite gender. This tracks with the fact that neuroimaging of trans brains shows that the areas in which male and female brains differ are either of the opposite gender or have in-between values.

[cubefox]

> Try knowing some in real life. I know dozens, and it's really hard not to think of them as psychologically being of the opposite gender.

I'm not sure what you mean with "opposite gender" (given that "gender" is now often no longer considered a synonym for "sex"), but I can tell you that all the MtF people I knew from college registered to me simply as men trying to act like women.

[HedonicEscal8r]

> Mentioning that they can't actually get pregnant, or impregnate someone, is taboo.

Don't know the context, but I don't think this is a "trans" thing. It is usually considered taboo to bring up someone's fertility or sexual issues, even if said issues are common knowledge.

> Disclaimer: I don't know any trans person IRL, so my perception is likely skewed by their loud online interactions.

As an exercise, pick any other minority group, and try to imagine forming an impression of them based solely on reading about the group in culture war arguments and online controversies. I know many trans people due to working in tech, living in California, and hanging out in (bio)hacking circles, and I can promise they are sane and normal people.

[UncleMeat]

This is, frankly, ridiculous. You don't know a single trans person and are making a broad sweeping claim about trans people being unreasonable in conversation about the nature of their transition?

[tosti]

At least you'll have a better idea if it's psychosomatic or not.

[pseudalopex]

Gender dysphoria is mental by definition.

[alexgieg]

No, it's first a matter of different connectomes. Their brains are physically those of the opposite gender, as shown by several studies using advanced neuroimaging and by autopsies. The mental/psychological effects of those brains being that way are effects of those very physical differences.

To fix that, we'd need microneurosurgery on the level of science fiction. Maybe in a few decades we will, but right now, reshaping the body so it gets as close as possible to what the brain expects is the only option available.

And yes, that neuroimaging could be used as a clinical diagnostic criterion, entirely replacing psychological and psychiatric evaluations. The problem is it costs a fortune, so right now only scientific teams with big budgets use it, and only to publish papers. Over the next several years, with any luck, neuroimaging diagnosis may fall enough in price that it may become the norm, at least in first-world countries.

[tosti]

Oh really? If a psychriatic disorder would warrant changing the environment the brain lives in, rather than any other therapy, why stop at gender disphoria?

Could the MPS people get surgerey so they have more mouths, limbs or even entire bodies except the brain? How about the schizo? Would treatment involve a set of VR goggles with a program that randomly generates perpetually morphing fantasy worlds? How about we make the depressed colorblind so their world is actually gray all the time?

I don't see why a therapy would purposefully not treat the actual symptoms, other than helping a patient understand and cope with them so they can recover their wellbeing.

[UncleMeat]

Tattoos aren't medical care that dramatically improves the lives of people.